The 2025-26 college basketball season is right around the corner, so let’s dive into the Marquette men’s basketball roster and take a look at what to expect from each player this season. Going forward
in these Player Previews, we’ll be going in this order: The four true freshmen expected to play this season going in alphabetical order by last name — skipping past Sheek Pearson who is projected to redshirt — then moving on to the redshirt freshman, then the redshirt junior who missed last year, and then going through the returning players in ascending order of total minutes played in 2024-25.
We’re going to organize our thoughts about the upcoming season as it relates to each player into categories, as we always do:
- Reasonable Expectations
- Why You Should Get Excited
- Potential Pitfalls
With that out of the way, we
Joshua Clark
Redshirt Freshman — #8 — Forward — 7’1” — 225 lbs. — Virginia Beach, Virginia
As you can see from the “Redshirt Freshman” in that line there, this is Joshua Clark’s second year in Milwaukee. He committed to Marquette in May 2024 in order to join the squad for the 2024-25 season, but that was always with the intent to sit out last season for developmental reasons. For purely weight gain related reasons, it seems like a pretty good idea. At the time, Clark was listed at 7 feet even and 215 points. I don’t think strength and conditioning coach Todd Smith had much to do with Clark adding an inch in height in the last 16 months, but he’s the guy responsible for finding those extra 10 pounds for Clark.
Let’s swing back to the press release announcing Clark’s signing, shall we? Here’s what it said about Clark:
Clark played each of the last two seasons at Clements High School in Sugar Land, Texas. He helped the Rangers to a 32-1 overall record in 2023-24 and the squad advanced to the regional quarterfinals under head coach Van Price. Clark was named the 20-6A Defensive Player of the Year as a senior and averaged 11.0 points, 8.5 rebounds and 3.5 blocks per game. He shot over 60.0 percent from the floor and blocked over 200 shot attempts.
And here’s what head coach Shaka Smart said about him:
“We are extremely excited about Josh joining our basketball family,” Smart said. “He possesses tremendous tools and character, has very supportive and aligned parents and comes from a background of winning. Josh will fit right in with our group’s sustained emphasis on relationships, growth and victory.”
Kind of fascinated about Clark playing his last two years of high school hoops in the Houston area but now claiming Virginia Beach as his home town. He wasn’t at a prep school/academy, so this isn’t like Chase Ross listing Cushing Academy in Massachusetts as his school and Dallas, Texas, as his home town. His bio says that he was born in Virginia Beach, so perhaps it’s just as simple as life took him to Sugar Land, but he identifies with the city of his birth.
Reasonable Expectations
Six minutes a game, 1.5 points, 1.2 rebounds.
Yes, that is hyper-specific, thank you for asking. Why? Because those numbers are exactly what Caedin Hamilton did last year for Marquette. There’s not much different between Hamilton and Clark, with both men as “project big men coming off a redshirt season to help them get ready to contribute.” Sure, Clark has four inches on Hamilton, which does naturally help him out in terms of immediate impact, but expecting more than the last guy who was a project big for Shaka Smart probably isn’t the best idea we’ve ever had, y’know?
To continue the point: The BartTorvik.com algorithm doesn’t have Clark listed as one of the top 10 contributors on this year’s team. We’ll get into why I don’t 100% buy that in a second, but we’re talking about reasonable expectations here. After what we saw from Hamilton last year — and Keeyan Itejere back in 2022-23, if we’re being honest — I don’t think that we can expect a whole bunch from Clark this year. The year in Milwaukee is going to be beneficial for him, but probably not “starting big man” beneficial.
Why You Should Get Excited
Someone has to start at center for Marquette.
I landed on “He was fine at worst” relative to Ben Gold’s adventures as Marquette’s starting center last season. That doesn’t stop me from thinking that he may be deployed best as the primary/starting 4-man in the starting lineup and occasionally landing as the big man on the floor depending on fouls and lineup rotations.
If that’s the case, then Marquette’s attention for a starting center turns to either Caedin Hamilton or Joshua Clark. This is the part where I don’t agree with BartTorvik.com leaving both of them out of the top 10 contributors. If Shaka Smart and his staff move Gold over to the 4 and tell Hamilton and Clark that “hey, you guys gotta figure out how to cover at least 30 of these minutes, have at it,” then at least one of them is pretty much automatically a top 10 contributor.
And why not Clark? He’s the taller one which helps on both offense and defense, he’s the one that lit up the McGuire Center with quickie dunks in last year’s open practice. I’m not talking about a massive overshooting of expectations here. Starting, playing 15 minutes, averaging five points and four rebounds, being a net positive defender? If Marquette can get that from Clark, I think that changes the trajectory of the season and bodes well for his development over the next several seasons, too.
Potential Pitfalls
Caedin Hamilton redshirted for a year and played 184 minutes last year, and just 91 after the start of Big East play.
Keeyan Itejere redshirted for a year and played just 29 minutes and just nine minutes after Big East play started.
There is a version of 2025-26 Marquette basketball where Shaka Smart and his staff see the best way forward with Ben Gold at center. If that’s what’s happening, then the big Kiwi is probably playing 25-30 minutes a night and the chances for playing time for Joshua Clark are disappearing into thin air after that.
The question might be whether or not Smart & Co. decide this before the season starts. What if they think that Clark and Hamilton can hold it down in the post, and then we get to the end of the Dayton game six contests into the year and that’s very much not the case? What if Clark’s 10 extra pounds over the last year just aren’t enough — I saw him in a sleeveless shirt at the Marquette/Wisconsin volleyball game and he doesn’t look that much bigger — to help him stand up to the physicality that he’s going to see in the Big East, and it becomes very clear over the first month of the season? He’s supposed to be a long term development project, so if that does happen, it’s not a problem for Smart’s roster building…. it just might be a problem for the 2025-26 Golden Eagles.
Follow Anonymous Eagle on social media
Facebook: AnonymousEagle
Instagram: AnonymousEagleSBN
Bluesky: AnonymousEagle
